Part Two

“Today is a special day. I hope all you sweet children are listening.” For the first time, I noticed her eyes. They were blue. Like that of a robin’s egg or a colored pencil. Even from my row, which was about thirty feet away from our guest speaker, you could easily see that sky color in her irises. In contrast, my hazel eyes were the color of dull moss. And you can only notice that up close. While I was so focused on Ms. Jebson’s eyes, I must have missed something that Ms. Jebson actually said because I heard a sudden series of gasps from the people around me.

“What just happened?” I asked my friend, mildly alarmed.

“Shhh. She’s not done talking about it.”

I glanced upward back at the podium. Ms. Jebson opened her mouth but quickly decided against talking. She must have thought it would be better if she just let us stew in what she said. I was really starting to regret not paying attention. The other kids, even the troublemakers (which was saying a lot), seemed really concerned about whatever was going on. Even though there was something about this woman that I did not trust, I thought I should start to listen up.

Ms Jebson opened her little mouth again (smeared with magenta lipstick, I noticed) and this time followed through with her speech.

“As I said, when the bell rings at the end of the day today, none of you will be going home. You will stay in your homerooms until further notice.”

A boy in the back row called out, “When are we going home?”

“You won’t,” Ms. Jebson answered in a calm, smug voice.

Dr. Williams looked at our guest speaker with an expression of bewilderment. The whole school could clearly see that she was not expecting this.

“Excuse me? Aren’t you giving us a public safety announcement? These students need to get to class”, she stated, sounding increasingly concerned.

“Right. Silly me! Always wear your seatbelts in the car. The state of Massachusetts will punish you if you refuse.”

At lunch, the whole cafeteria was abuzz with chatter. Well, it always was, but this time everyone was talking about the same thing. This morning’s assembly.

“What did she mean by ‘you’re not going home’?” asked one of my friends. It must have been the millionth time someone had thrown that around. Most thought we would only stay after for an extra forty-five minutes or so (about the length of time of one school period). It was probably a statewide public safety thing.

“I bet every school in Massachusetts is doing this,” they told themselves.

But I wasn’t so sure. Call me a skeptic, but this was really starting to bother me.

The afternoon bell for homeroom rang. Everyone stayed in their seats. Toes continued to tap against the floor impatiently. Eyes continued to blankly stare at random places in the room. Mouths continued to speak when they were technically not supposed to. This was how the room was for a good ten to fifteen minutes until we heard the speaker by the clock crackle a little, and then someone spoke. The speaker was, unsurprisingly, Ms. Jebson.

“The school is currently in lockdown. All students in the seventh grade whose last names start with the letters A through M must report to the auditorium to receive their name tags.”

Anger spread through the room like wildfire.

“Who is she to tell us what to do?” voices mouthed bitterly.

“I thought she had to do what we said. Isn’t she the visitor?” called others.

Another announcement came through the loudspeaker.

Ms. Jebson haughtily announced, “All teachers must come down to the gym to receive their name tags.”

Every student in the room immediately shifted his or her gaze onto our homeroom teacher. A look of surprise registered on her face. But, seeing nothing else to do in the situation, she calmly rose from her swivel chair by her computer and strode out of the classroom.

“No teacher,” said one boy mischievously. A sly grin materialized on his face. His buddy’s eyes slid to his direction. He also looked like he was starting to not mind our little predicament.

The usual cries of “party!” erupted throughout the second-floor eighth grade hallway, and the entire school itself. Smaller kids jumped onto desks while bigger kids put their sizable vocal chords to use. But the initial feelings of liberation soon died down.

One of the teacher’s pets blurted out in fear, “When are they coming back? Its been twenty minutes!”

“It’s probably just a really long line. There’s a ton of teachers in this school. Don’t forget all of the aids that nobody knows,” consoled a boy, more to himself than the person he was speaking to.

The minute hand on the clock moved slowly but steadily through each five-minute interval. The 8, the 9, the 10...

“All students may now walk to the auditorium. Teams 7 White and 7 Blue are first. in five minutes, 7 Red and the eighth grade will follow suit.”

A few hours later, every eighth grade student was sitting in the cafeteria at their usual lunch tables eating dinner, which was whatever the school didn’t use during lunch earlier that day.

“Hey guys, this is so weird. We’re eating dinner at school. Has this ever even happened at Jefferson?” I heard a guy sitting at the table behind me say. Other kids shared similar thoughts.

The funny thing was, my dad promised to bring pizza home from a good restaurant that night. At that moment, I realized that despite all of these crazy events, I still ended up eating pizza after all, though not from any restaurant. Thank goodness at least one thing was going as planned.

Here was the story: while we were waiting in line to have our new name tags stuck to our shirts, Ms. Jebson began to show her true colors by announcing the changes that were being made to the school. The condensed version of her long speech was that we were going to stay in the school building at all times and not leave under any circumstance “until further notice.” It was turning into something that was almost a catch phrase, “until further notice.” That meant that we would have to sleep here. Girls would go to the white hallway/wing of the school while the boys would remain in the blue/red section.

After dinner, my group of about twenty-five girls were led up to the now former homeroom of a Spanish teacher.

“People with last names beginning with the letters A through M are sleeping on the right side of the room, remaining girls will be on the left,” directed a young woman that nobody had seen before. She introduced herself to us as Miss Mills, and told us that she would be the person responsible for everyone in the room.

“So don’t get in trouble. Or you’ll all have to feel my wrath,” Miss Mills joked. Nobody laughed. No amount of light-hearted jokes could disguise the fact that it was six thirty at night and we were still in school, and we had no idea when we were going home.

“You guys should probably get some rest while you can. Lauryl wants work to begin tomorrow. It’s hard, so take advantage of the time you have now.”

“Work?” inquired the sleepy voice of a girl on the N-Z side of the room. “What work are we gonna do?”

Miss Mills shrugged her shoulders slowly as if someone had just placed a huge load on her. “Look, I’m just the messenger. I don’t know exactly for sure what you’ll all be doing in the morning but it probably won’t be fun and games.”

“Who’s Lauryl?” asked someone up front.

“Oh sorry!” Miss Mills laughed heartily. “Lauryl is Ms. Jebson. Lauryl Elaine Jebson. But you all have to call her Ms. Butler.”

While in the middle of a yawn, the tired girl mused, “Lauryl Elaine...Lauryl Elaine...I like that name...”

Okay, what am I supposed to do now? The whole school is asleep. I’m the only one up. Could I just...leave? Walk out? I’ve got no idea what this is, but it’s definitely not some public safety thing.

The clock said it was midnight. It was hard for everyone to rest in such a strange place (on the floor, without any blankets or pillows), but sleep eventually claimed everyone but me. My eyes had remained on that slow minute hand for a loathsome three hours. There was no way I was going to stay here for as long as Lauryl Elaine Jebson intended. But what if this was just some elaborate plan? No, we would have known about it beforehand. I bet we would have even gotten permission slips. This came as a total surprise, even to the teachers. I knew that for sure.

You could hear a pin drop. That was how quiet the room was. Silent as the tomb. Maybe the faint sound of people breathing. This is my chance. Very, very, carefully, I rose up and snaked my way around the other sleeping girls. The silver colored handle of the door was in my grasp soon afterward.

“Oh, whadda ya want...” I freaked out thinking I had been caught, “...Billy?”

Ms. Mills was talking in her sleep. I almost sighed in relief, but caught myself. Come on door handle, turn! The handle did indeed turn, making a soft click in the process. As silently as possible, I crept out into the dimly lit hallway and shut the door in a similar manner. Whew. I breathed in the smell of a freshly cleaned floor and smiled. Wait a sec...freshly cleaned? Is there someone in the hallway?

The last thing I needed was to come all this way only to get caught by a janitor. Right now, I needed to find a hiding spot and work out a plan from there. Good thing I knew exactly where to go. Quickly but softly, I made my way to the 8 Blue hallway and shut myself into the janitor’s closet between the boy’s and girl’s bathrooms. It sounded like I was not the only one up in the whole school. I could hear the voices of a small group of boys through the wall on the boy’s bathroom side. Girl voices were also present. For several moments, I didn’t notice the odd pair behind me until I turned around and was startled by four very surprised blue eyes.

Part Three

For what seemed like eternity, we stared at each other. I blinked, they blinked, we took each other in. They saw a brunette girl who was a little short, wearing clothes similar to the other girls. I saw two boys. One must have been a seventh-grader that I did not know, the other couldn’t have been any older that about nine. Even nine was pushing it. Interesting. I wonder how he got in? After about a minute, I ventured out of my comfort zone.

“Umm... hi?” This was starting to get awkward.

“Hey. Are you an eighth grader?” asked the older boy nervously.

Slowly, I nodded. Part of me said it was time to go back to the old Spanish classroom and deal with Miss Mills and her odd sleeping habits. But the other part of me was excited to finally be breaking the rules after a lifetime of being the good girl. My feet stayed planted on the dirty floor of the janitor’s closet.

“How come you’re not in your room?” he asked me. The younger boy looked at me quizzically. His striking dark blue eyes bore into me.

‘I guess you could say I got bored. I don’t know, I couldn’t go to sleep. Apparently I’m not the only one,” I said, shrugging.

Despite their age gap, the pair looked very much alike. Blonde hair, same eyes, a few freckles scattered here and there. Normal kids.

The seventh-grader shrugged in a similar way that I did. “Yeah I guess that makes sense. Jimmy here,” he motioned to the younger boy, “is my brother. My parents were coming to pick me up around the time the bell rang, but the school went into lockdown the minute they showed up. They were actually walking through the door. My parents were still outside, my brother was trapped in here because he ran ahead through the doors.”

Jimmy suddenly sniffled.

“It’s okay, we won’t be here forever. Just for a little while,” he quickly comforted his little brother.

“How long do you think we’ll be in here?” I asked the older boy.

Once again, he shrugged. “Remember? She didn’t say, she just said that thing she always says.”

“Until further notice,” I mimicked her important-sounding voice.

“Yeah,” he said chuckling.

I had no idea where to go from there. Going back to get some sleep was the best option, but I was not ready for that just yet.

“If we’re going to be stuck here for a long time, what’s gonna happen?” I asked.

A fierce look crosses the seventh-grader’s face, and it startles me when he speaks, “I’m not letting my little brother stay trapped in the stage area any longer than a couple of days. If this show runs any longer than that, we’re making a break for it.”

He has a point. Jimmy technically isn’t even allowed in here without permission on regular school days, never mind a situation like this. The older brother, whose name I still did not know, didn’t want to risk getting in trouble. So all afternoon, Jimmy hid behind the curtains on the stage in the auditorium.

“The only reason we didn’t leave tonight was because I thought there would be lots of those people that Ms. Jebson brought ready to catch any runaway kids.”

A thought creeped into my head. Who says that I have to stay here as long as that crazy Ms. Jebson says? I had been wanting to go home since lunchtime. Staying in this school for a few whole days? Almost intolerable. I hoped three wasn’t a crowd for this pair.

“Hey,” I start.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think I could join you guys? I don’t want to stay here another five seconds.”

The boys looked at each other, obviously conflicted.

“I don’t know...”

I cut the older boy off. “I won’t tell anyone. Nobody else will come except for me! I’m it. I won’t drag anybody else in on this.”

Oh, I hoped they would let me go with them. Aside from the fact that escape would get us out of this place, it sounded fun. Plotting against our superiors and running off like wanted men? I was sold.

Before he spoke, I could already tell the older brother was not one hundred percent with this, “You can’t tell another living soul about it. This is between us, nobody else gets involved. Got it? You can’t drag one of your friends into this last-minute.” He almost seemed to sneer at the word “friends”.

“I won’t do that, I promise.” I understood his situation. Here he was trying to get his little brother out of this place, and I was butting in. I felt selfish suddenly. But at the same time, I was mentally rejoicing. I now officially had a one-way ticket out of this place! That outweighed the shame.

“I guess it’s best if I just go back now. There’s no point in staying here. My chances of getting caught are going up the longer I’m not asleep in that room they made me stay in.” I said with a sigh.

He nodded. “Meet us at this time tomorrow here. We’ll be planning for Wednesday night.”

“Okay,” I replied. “Wait...”

Jimmy and his older brother looked up at me expectantly.

“What’s your name?” I pointed at the older brother. I had kept forgetting to ask throughout the duration of our unexpected get-together.

“Jacob. Don’t call me Jake. There are way too many people with that nickname.”

“Okay... Jacob.” Interesting. Kids very rarely refuse to go by a typical nickname. Especially if your name is Jacob and everyone other Jacob you know goes by “Jake”.

When I first opened my eyes that morning, panic insidiously crept into my veins. Did Miss Mills know anything about last night? Or just as frightening, did any of the other girls know? I didn’t think they would report me, but I could not be too sure. Relief nearly swept me off my feet when I overheard Miss Mill’s conversation with a small group of girls about “how wonderfully she slept” and how “you girls are just so good, I can’t wait to brag to everyone about how good my bunk is.”

While I was busy fantasising about the planned escape, I felt something like the tip of pencil on my back. I turned around with a jolt, and my eyes met a girl staring at me.

“I know you left last night. If you do it again, I’ll tell.”

Miss Mills was right when she said we were going to be working that day. Half of the 8 Blue kids were directed to the field house because Ms. Jebson wanted to convert it into a storage facility.

“For what?” piped the high voice of one of the tiniest girls.

Lauryl Jebson smirked and flatly said, “That is yet to be determined.”

We labored for hours. The bleachers had to be taken down and reassembled in the back of the baseball field behind the high school, which was located directly next to the middle school. The bigger kids did that, while I and the smaller students crawled through crevices or hard-to-reach places to sweep out any dirt and grime that resided. It got very tiring, very quickly. I thought the whole day had gone by when Miss Mills called my group up for lunch.

Lunch was unexpected--and disappointing. Whoever got to the cafeteria first was lucky enough to gain access to leftovers. The rest of us, myself included, each drank a carton of milk and a stale bread roll provided by one of the new people that arrived with Ms. Jebson. I almost choked on a chunk of the stuff (which was hard enough to swallow already) when I remembered what the nosy girl said that morning.

I know you left last night. If you do it again, I’ll tell. What was her problem? If I was in her place and saw what she saw, I would have kept my mouth shut. In fact, I would pretend it never even happened. What benefit would it be to her if she ratted me out? Was she the kind of person that got satisfaction out of other people’s miseries? There was a word for that. I learned it in my English class. What was it? Oh right...schadenfreude. Nobody really uses that term today, but it sure described her.

On my way back up to the old Spanish classroom, I witnessed a disturbing scene. By the front office, a very small seventh-grade boy was on the verge of tears. Next to him, or rather above him, was an immensely tall vulture-like man shouting obscenities into the poor kid’s face. Omitting the cursing, what I could make out was:

Man: Escaping is a serious offense, Billy. You know this. If you get caught trying to pull that crap ever again under my watch, I swear I’ll have your head!

Billy (in-between sniffles): I’m sorry Mr. Jones. I’m sooo sorry! I promise I won’t do it again, please let me go!

Man: You know the rules. You break ‘em, we break you.

Following this, he grabbed the boy by his collar and stuffed him into a blue crate. It looked like the kind that novice ice-skaters use to keep their balance, except it must have been about three times larger because it could accommodate a twelve year old boy.

Man: Stay in there until I feel like dragging your sorry butt back outta there. Got it, kid?

Billy apparently knew better than to elaborate on a solemn “yes”. The man was not quite finished. He called out, “Joseph!” and a jock-like boy materialized in the doorway to the office.

“There you are, Joey. You’re a good kid for reporting this little punk. Here’s your reward.” With that, he handed this “Joey” a huge homemade canoli. At that moment, I almost reached out to grab it myself. The heavy, thick, unhealthy cream filling was almost too much to resist. Even from where I was. That’s it! That was why the girl wanted to report me. You get rewarded with decent food. I had to dodge the obstacle of that girl tonight somehow, since I was going to be planning with my fellow escapees.

The man temporarily left a canoli on the bench by the office entryway. Just my luck. They aren’t the only ones who can bribe kids.

“Keep quiet? Oh sure. That’s totally gonna happen.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“You bet it is,” I told her with a wink. Out from behind my back, I gave her the canoli that I technically stole.

Her jaws dropped. “Where’d you get that thing?” she asked in a hushed whisper.

I shrugged. “That’s not important. The point is, it’s really good. And I will let you have it as long as you don’t say anything about me leaving the room at night.”

I could almost see her mouth watering at the sight of the rich, creamy, still-cold canoli. She nodded rapidly, her right hand already outstretched for the luscious Italian dessert. I let her take it.

“Eat it quick, make sure no one sees you.”

Thank God that was taken care of.

Part Four

Tonight’s process of slowly creeping out of the room, tuning out Miss Mills’ sleeptalking, and hearing the click of the opening door handle was no different from last night’s. When I opened the door to the janitor’s closet, I was surprised to find that the brother duo had arrived before me. I had left the room earlier that I had the night before.

Jimmy shut the door behind me. “We’re gonna get outta here!” he exclaimed cheerfully. Jacob had to quiet him down. There were less voices next door on either side in the bathrooms that could mask ours.

“We’re not outta here yet,” he said. “Whisper.” He then announced his plan. “I say we leave around midday when everyone’s working and Ms. Butler’s people are too busy running around keeping track of the kids who have outside jobs.”

Remembering all of the authoritarian figures who barked orders inside the building that morning, I shook my head.

“Why not?” Jacob asked. “It sounds like a pretty good plan to me.”

“There are a ton of adults in the field house where I work, too. Maybe during dinner would be better. Everyone in the school eats then, including the grown-ups.”

Jimmy seemed to side with me. “Yeah, a guy came behind the curtain this morning to get something. A bunch of kids came, too.”

I nodded. “Don’t forget, it’ll be darker outside then. People won’t see us as well.”

Jacob gave out an exasperated sigh. “Fine. We’ll do it her way.” He seemed to sneer at the word “her”.

“What’ll be our excuse?” I asked.

“The bathroom, obviously,” Jacob spat. He still did not seem too happy about the fact that Jimmy chose to side with me over his own brother about how we should go about our escape. Oh well, he has the rest of the night to sulk about it.

The next day was very similar to the previous one. Wake up, eat whatever excuse for a breakfast there was, work on cleaning the field house just so we can put a bunch of things back into it again, eat a pathetic lunch, go back to the field house, work some more--until it was finally time for dinner. I never asked to go to the bathroom that whole day, so popping the question just before the evening meal seemed harmless enough.

The night before, Jacob and I decided to quickly eat our meals before we attempted our escape. We had no idea when we would eat again. I halfheartedly bit into a small, stale bread roll and tapped my foot anxiously. Would we make it? Or would we get caught? My eyes shifted over towards the clock on the wall in the back of the room. We decided the night before to wait until 6:15, then I would look for Jacob. He would give the signal, which was the two-finger peace sign. Then, we would casually go up to one of the adults, ask to go to the bathroom, and basically just walk out. It sounded like a good plan.

Not ten seconds had passed since the clock read 6:15 when I spotted Jacob giving our little signal in the back corner of the room. Slowly, I rose and started making my way over to Miss Mills. Even from twenty feet away, I could clearly hear her conversation with another woman about “we shouldn’t be giving these children milk that is past the expiration date.” Everyone in the vicinity’s faces turned green the minute those words came out. I felt like vomiting myself, but now was obviously not the time.

“Miss Mills?”

“Yes hon?” she jolted when she saw me so close to her.

“Can I go to the bathroom?” Please say yes, please say yes...

“Of course you can, sweetheart. Why did you even bother asking?” With that, she turned around and resumed her conversation.

Thank you! You don’t know what this means to me! I glanced over at Jacob. He was tapping his watch, indicating that I was taking a while. Quickly but unnoticeably, I strode out of the room and took a right down the hall.

“We need to be off school property in seven minutes. We gotta move.”

Seven minutes was not very much time when you had to rescue a little boy in an auditorium on the other side of the school, and then turn around and find the quickest way out. Jacob and I half-walked/half jogged down the hall and past several open doors. Occasionally, we passed a door with someone inside. During these times, one of us stuck our head through the doorway to see if it was safe to go past. We never had any problems. Nobody had ever used the auditorium since Ms. Jebson took over, so slipping in there was easy enough.

“Where does Jimmy usually hide?” I asked Jacob softly.

He shrugged. “Wherever he can fit. He told me he spent a whole hour under the bleachers yesterday.”

Suddenly, I saw something in the corner of my eye. A small shape was moving across the stage and down the steps.

“You guys came! You’re awesome!” Jimmy cried when he was within ten feet of us.

At the same time, Jacob and sharply went, “Shhhhhhhh!”

Jimmy hunched his shoulders and lowered his neck. “Oh. I’m sorry, guys.”

There was no time for apologies. The three of us immediately ran out of the large, empty room and down the seventh-grade hallway on the left. The doorway to freedom was thirty feet away. Now twenty, now ten, now five. My arm pushed the door open, freeing Jimmy. He ran like lightening out that door and into the setting sun across the baseball field. Just as Jacob and I were about to follow suit, large bearlike hands grabbed hold to our shirts. I struggled for a few moments, but those heavy hands soon won.

“So. You two thought you could make a break for it, eh? We’ll see about that. “ The low, booming voice chuckled. I turned around and saw a monstrous man smiling with yellow, crooked teeth. Jacob and I had been caught.





Epilogue

“You have commited such a terrible act! Lying to your guardians and trying to run from all that we give you? Selfish. Absolutely selfish.” Lauryl Elaine Jebson would not stop her lecture on how we were violating on of the most important rules, not being the good young people she knew we were etc. All Jacob and I could do was sit and stare at her. What did we have to say in our defense? We tried to run. We got cought. Period. End of story. And now we were awaiting our punishment.

“Mr. Jones will take you to your ‘residences’ for the night. I will now go and get some sleep. Hmmph.” Ms. Jebson huffed, turned up her nose, and waltzed out of the room.

Mr. Jones looked at us with spite. “Come with me.”

What choice did we have? Jacob and I followed him out of the office. Mr. Jones grabbed me by my shirt collar and gently tossed me into the same blue crate that the little boy was cast into the night before. Another blue crate was set up for Jacob. He was forced into it in the same way I was. The disappointment was crushing. I barely had the energy to weakly touch the left wall of my blue prison. The bright royal blue color stung my eyes. Tears were threatening to make an appearance.

“You kids just keep trying to leave left and right. Unbelievable,” Mr. Jones muttered under his breath angrily.

One good thing came out of this dream-turned-nightmare.

“Jimmy knows the way back to our house. It’s only a half of a mile down the street,” Jacob whispered.

I sighed. “Thank God he got away.”


THE END